Shattered
by saichanlovestoad
Summary: Companion piece to 'Surrender'. Eddie's past returns to torment him one evening when the circumstances play out in a hauntingly familiar way.
1. Chapter 1

A/N- I do not own these characters or Child's Play. I right this for fun. I am receiving no money from this fic.

This was a request from **muse of suffering** that is at least three months overdo. It is also a companion piece to **Surrender**. It is a oneshot that turned out so long, I broke it into two parts. Part two will be posted tomorrow, when I'm done editing it and making sure I'm as happy with it as this part.

Hope you like it girl.

This story contains rape, implied rape, molestation, incest, slash, and graphic scenes of abuse and violence. Don't like, don't read.

Don't forget to take my new poll. Thanks a bunch.

Enjoy. Love, Sai-chan

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Fall in Chicago was nothing like fall at all. There was snow on the ground, stained black from the society that failed to notice it's purity. The air was chilled like ice, puffs of air flooding up to the gray clouds above. Every inch of the world was a blissful stain of frozen decay. There was no such thing as fall. There was only a prelude to the frosty cold of winter, like the calm before the storm, when snowflakes fell in steady streams, the wind blew in gusts, and the ground was solid. This was all before the city was lost in a blizzard of conditions only the desperate wandered in. Such was the evening then as the darkness danced over the dimly white snow. Grays overthrew the lightness that was supposed to linger on the wonderland described in so many songs. A storm was brewing, the clouds twisting and swirling, threatening to spill out thousands of pounds of more frozen terror. Winter was just around the corner. The prologue was nearly done and the main event was pulling back the curtains. The show was about to begin.

He nearly scoffed at the sediment, biting down on the end of a cigarette. The bitter taste of chemicals mixed with the buzz of nicotine washed over his tongue. The flavor wasn't something he could outright say he enjoyed. He only smoked on nights like that; when it was too cold to be outside, when it wasn't right to be walking around the edge of some deserted park, because the weather was wrong and the hour lately awkward. The habit wasn't a social thing, nor a bad addiction. Merely something to do in order to warm his otherwise empty soul. The fire at the end of the stick created the ball of flames he needed to melt the ice and shake off the flakes that landed on his heavy overcoat. Regardless of his leather boots and thick layers of clothing, he had always felt cold out there, by that park. That's why he brought along a pack of smokes. When human methods failed, he could just pour some toxins inside and feel better.

Whenever he was by that park, that was most certainly the preferred method. He truly wished he has a chaser of alcoholic proportions when he heard the noise that made him cover his ears. Sticking his smoke into his mouth and biting down on it, he pressed his palms over his ear muffs in a vain attempt to drown it out. On that crisp evening, however, the pulsing sound flooded his mind. The cackle, the hysteria, jumped to life, spinning itself through the air. Any one else who heard it would have run for cover. There was something simply wrong with that amount of pleasure being derived from a single action. No one had to see what lurked beyond the trees and undergrowth to know that. They would just know. The essence of evil dripped off that crashing thunderous laugh in thick streams.

Regardless, Eddie Caputo stepped into the crunching snow of the park. The ground was coated in the heaven's purity, but the majority of it was stained and ruined for the existence of demons and devils there on Earth. He followed footsteps of that nature into the depths of a park where lovers met and children played in the light of day. By the moonlight of a cloudy night and the fire of his cigarette, he wound himself through the dense woods. On the outskirts of a city, one would find it difficult to find an oasis of trees and plant life untouched by construction. Although he didn't know where he was, he knew that's what he was walking through. He hadn't found it, of course. He merely understood it's general location and it's occupation during the hours in which he slept. Society's version of the outdoors, it was a spacious park complete with plenty of fields for picnics and thick lanes of forest. The back end of it dropped down to a river that flowed under a busy street, the front end connected to the pavement at a decently deserted stretch of road. The place wasn't so far off that it wasn't used. However, the section in which he walked was pretty much of that variety.

Set off in the back, away from the fields and the realm of normality, he trudged through mud and snow to the middle, or as close to it as he could come, of the woods. Eddie wouldn't call them woods exactly. After all, they were located off the edge of a manmade park. Yet, they were close enough to them that he had stopped arguing about the title. He maintained mentally, though, that they were in a park on the outskirts of Chicago, somewhere. There wasn't a reason to cling to the thought. In all honesty, it probably wasn't the best idea. Whenever he connected the image of children playing tag and couples wining and dining on red blankets to what he was heading towards, he suddenly felt like emptying his stomach. That moment was a perfect example. His mind had a flicker of picturesque family summertime fun coupled with the twisted bodies of women and his head swam. He ran his gloved fingers over his stomach and fought the urge to cringe. Just when he thought he was going to, though, two dark eyes looked up through the darkness. They locked on him and there was a flash of white as teeth were cast in a smile meant for him.

Two wholly separate images spliced together as Eddie's body fell into the hard bark of a tree somewhere on his left. The first was the least horrifying of the two. A woman he had never seen before that hour, dressed in a winter's coat with fake fur lining. Her loose ponytail was pulled down so that her wildly blond hair was sprawled on the hard and frozen ground. Eyes like emeralds shimmered with the glassy appearance of death, wide and open forever. Wet spit ran down from her cracked and blue lips to her mangled throat. Blue and green marks encircled her fragile neck, so dark and hard they appeared to physically cut into the flesh. The rest of her, the clothes, the position, all vanished as the worse image jumped through his vision. He actually felt himself being forced backwards, his feet slipping in the wet leaves fallen from the branches of lifeless trees. A man he had known for years, his roommate, his counterpart, his better half to an extent. Loose curls of what appeared to be black in the shadows of hell framing a vibrant expression of insanity. Luminous eyes of burnt wood glowing throughout the carnage, a smile of ecstasy over his lips. His body was draped in an overcoat that was undone, revealing an unbuttoned suit jacket and tie loosely done up. His gloves were laying on the white crystals, leaving his hands palely glistening in the few rays of the moonlight that managed to creep down to that place. His hands were outstretched, shivering, but not from the cold lingering in the air.

Without consideration for his new audience, Chucky Ray moved his hands back to the broken neck of that woman none of them knew. He ran his fingertips alone over the bruised flesh, caressing his handiwork. Her head rolled to the side, her hair falling over her hollow cheek washed out from the halting of her blood. His hands tenderly rubbed her lips, smearing her faded lipstick that much more. When he reached the strands of gold falling into empty eyes, he leaned over her unmoving corpse. Eddie felt his body clench, his head jerking away as those tender lips met her dead skin. Chucky rested one hand on her throat, the other curling in her damp hair, as he pressed his mouth over hers. There was nothing resembling lust nor affection of any kind in that embrace. Merely the hauntingly familiar predatory need to defile and violate any and all innocence placed before the true and unadulterated serial killer.

To Charles Lee Ray, that included the preciously obligatory respect reserved for the dead, especially those victimized by monsters late at night.

Having tainted her even in her demise, he pulled away from her remains, licking his lips of the taste of her lasting fear. He ran his fingers over her neck one last time before he finally moved away from her contorted form. His leather boots crushed his gloves on the way up, which was the only reason he probably remembered to grab them off the ground in the first place. Tugging them on, he sidestepped the body and made his way over to where Eddie was pushing his back into the tree he had fallen against. Eddie felt his eyes lifting from the woman as Chucky drew ever closer. He wanted to say something, but his stomach was churning. All he could do was close his eyes and raise his hand in order to do the sign of the cross and bestow some dignity to that forsaken female. Before he could, though, his wrist was grabbed out of mid air. Instantly, he was faced with eyes of semi sweet chocolate.

" Don't,"

The command was spoken without a single trace of command. Just a Jersey voice dancing with urban slang speaking in a halting manner. Someone else would have confused the halt with the pressure of an order. Eddie knew otherwise and recognized the manner of speaking that Chucky always used. He knew the solitary word wasn't a command in the same breath that it was a regulation that came with a hefty price for ignoring. The second his wrist was released, then, he lowered it down to hang idly at his side. He desperately wanted to utter a prayer, to do something to help that strangled soul up to her rightful place. Still, he saw those eyes and that thin line in that distant face, and he knew not to chance fate. Rather, he allowed his eyes to wander the setting of this woman's death. He didn't know why he was looking. He knew that looking made it all too real. If he just turned his back to it, he wouldn't have to face it. Yet, he couldn't tear his eyes away once he was facing it, facing _her._

The trees were thick, heavy things with twisting branches reaching up towards the bleak and dark skies like so many little hands begging for forgiveness. Even without leaves, there was a canopy that prevented the moonlight from completely reaching the Earth. Instead, it was shattered, broken on the way down, falling in scattered pieces over the uneven ground below. The ground itself was dark, even with the light. Rough dirt the color of mud, hard and solid, half way frozen for the chill in the air. Patches of grass spurted through the gritty looking floor. Leaves, mostly dead, although some still bore some color, lay in piles and clumps throughout the small clearing that formed almost a perfect circle. Undergrowth was crushed, for the two sets of heavy boots of the two of them. Sprawled out in all of this partially peaceful landscaping was the body. Her face remained turned to the side, her blank eyes staring off into the trees, searching for the help she had never gotten and never would.

Closing his eyes then, Eddie ran his tongue over his dry lips as he turned away. There was a brief moment when he wanted to double back and close her eyes at the very least, but he knew what would happen if he dared. Thus, he did exactly what he always did. He obeyed the will of someone much more dangerous then they let on and walked away. His boots created softly echoing sounds as hollow as death itself. The only other sound he heard were the same sort of footsteps a couple yards ahead of him. He followed them through the winding trees of that wooded area only a couple feet from where that woman had probably picnicked with her family, perhaps even her children. Shaking his head, he forced the image away. He pictured her in the only way he knew her, the only way that would lessen the guilt that was beginning to pool inside. He pictured her as the corpse she had become, not the person she had been. As far as he was concerned, she was nothing more then a body, another body. Instructing himself to think of her as only that, he finally eased his dying smoke from his mouth.

Blowing the smoke up over his head, he stepped out of the woods and into what he supposed would have to be classified as reality. He knew that what he had left behind had not been real in the sense of being reality. She was real, of course. She was a poor lost soul caught up in a fury she had nothing to do with. The woods were real. They stood still day in and day out regardless of their presence, never mind the terrors or pleasures found within. The cold was real, the night sky was real, everything he saw before him, before that moment when he walked out between those two petrified tress, all of it was real. However real it was, it did not belong to reality. All of it was nothing more then a nightmare he continuously visited whenever darkness fell and his roommate tugged on his particular leather boots and heavily lined coat. A nightmare he couldn't escape without ending up much like the woman who was now a solitary body spread eagle in the middle of a wooded area on some icy fall night. That wasn't reality to Eddie. That was merely the sickened world Chucky existed in when he wasn't smiling and laughing and pretending he could, in fact, be normal.

Reality was in that banged up, tattered black van that Chuck was leaning against, his curls pinned back by the hand at his forehead. One foot was up, pressed to the back tire of their getaway ride, his free hand snapping in Eddie's direction. He snapped three times, then waved his fingers in a circle. Several years of being ordered by silence had versed Eddie in the language being used. He flipped out his pack of smokes and tossed them to the serial killer as he drifted on by. Despite the lingering sense of dread he got from abandoning that nameless woman without any form of burial rites, he didn't show it. He chewed on the end of his cigarette as he fumbled around for the keys. Standing at the driver's side, he couldn't see much outside the outline of the woods fading away for the darkening night and the sleek black paint peeling away from the metal bones of their van. The roads were deserted, leaving the two night lurkers alone in their demented privacy. There was a banging from the passenger side, the other's Jersey voice demanding the cause of the holdup. Eddie never bothered with a response. He just shoved the key in and gave it a meaningful jerk, unlocking the door. Inside he heaved himself, pushing himself over the gears to unlock the other side. The door was yanked open and Chucky was then seated next to him, rubbing his arms.

" Fucker, it's cold out. What cha doin' messin' with the damn keys?" he sneered, reaching over and twisting his fingers up in Eddie's short hair. He didn't give him much of a chance to response in anything other then a half hearted shrug. In his unassuming manner, he pointed off towards the road, his eyes closing in their bored gesture of unimpressed apathy. Although his body language said he was probably calm, the way he rolled his tongue over the end of his unlit cigarette said otherwise, " Drive,"

The command was stated the same way all the others were given. Haltingly short with a hint of malice but without the pressure of an order. Nevertheless, Eddie turned the key in the ignition and turned the car out onto the empty road. He didn't turn the headlights on until they reached the main road at the end of the stretch that dropped them by that park with the woods. Once they got there, he flipped them on as he headed back the way they came. A few other cars bustled on by, seemingly at a busier pace then the van was going. Eddie, for his part, went the speed limit. As far as he was concerned, hauling a wanted murderer to and from crime scenes was enough law breaking without adding an arrest for speeding. Besides, if he was going to go down as Chucky's accomplice, then he would prefer to get caught at the scene rather then in a van they had stolen off some now dead campers a couple years ago. He wasn't entirely sure as to why, but he humored the idea of going out with a bang.

Either way, the ride home was neither exciting nor time consuming. Without other cars on the road and without the added stress of police patrol cars, they needn't speed to arrive at the inner city shortly. From there, the ride was a bit rougher. He took mostly back roads to avoid as much congestion as possible, for even at late evening, there was congestion in the city. In about twice the time, then, he had them parked outside the rundown apartment complex building that they claimed as home. Flipping off the lights and burning out their cigarettes, the two climbed out of the car and locked up the doors. Chucky lead the way up to the building without any lights on. As he pushed open the entrance door, Eddie cast a glance up at the rows of windows that soared to the top. He didn't know what it was that frightened him about no one else being home or awake, but he recognized the fear quite vividly. Rolling it around his mouth, tasting it's awful flavor, he lit up another smoke and stuck it between his teeth. He took a drag as he followed the killer through the halls and up the stairs to their floor.

The door to their apartment was near the end of the hallway on one of the middle floors. The numbers had fallen off ages ago and no one had ever thought to replace them. Not that it mattered much any more. Neither of them received any sort of messages, deliveries, or mail. Their apartment number had no purpose other then to prove that they lived somewhere in that building. Thus, Eddie had never mentioned it. He didn't mention it then as Chucky kicked open their door and walked inside their place of residence. The other quickly did the same, locking the several locks on the wall to keep their door closed no matter who came searching for them. Considering their occupation, the excessive protection didn't seem enough. Fresh from the scene, Eddie could only swallow dryly as he rubbed his gloved fingers over a free spot on the frame. He vaguely wished for another lock to appear before turning his back to the outside world.

He didn't look at the apartment's living room. He wasn't a part of it. The only portion of the entire place that he considered his was the bedroom off to the corner. Thus, he stepped over the trash and overturned furniture until he had his hand against the flimsy door to his bedroom. Pausing there, he slowly looked over his shoulder. His gaze didn't take in anything about the surroundings that he hadn't looked at in over a year. Instead, he looked to the kitchen where his roommate was. Chucky had a smoke in one hand, a beer in the other, the door to the grimy fridge propped open with his foot. Eddie couldn't see his feet for the counter, but he knew from experience that's how he kept it open. Watching him for a second longer gathered him what he was waiting for. Chuck noticed the attention and turned his way, momentarily pushing his messy hair back over one ear as though that would help him hear what Eddie would never say.

Looking back to the door, Eddie turned the knob and slipped inside. He clicked the wooden barrier behind him, leaning heavily against it. He didn't bother with the lock. He hadn't been able to get the lock to catch since the day they had moved in. Rather, he began to pull off the layers to his winter style clothing in mid fall. How he managed to do this without burning himself, he would never know. Somewhere along the line, he had learned the method without memorizing the steps. He didn't put too much thought into it. He just pulled off the clothes until all he had on were his worn out jeans and his white undershirt. The apartment was barely warmer then the frosty night outside, but he didn't want to crawl into bed in all that bulk. Even though he wasn't anywhere near tired, he knew his next stop was that bed crushed into that shoebox sized room. Kicking off his boots last, he trudged over to the wooden bed frame with a mattress missing the box springs and let his body drop down. The sheets coughed up some dust from years of abusive owners before settling and becoming decently comfortable. Eddie wouldn't call it comfortable, for it was old and had no life left to it. However, it was his bed and he wasn't going to complain about it. Should he, he would wind up sleeping on the couch and that ratty thing was older then his mattress. He had decided long ago that while he would prefer not to sleep on his bed, he would prefer not to sleep on the couch more. On the bed he was stuck then, smoking through his second to last pack of smokes and lacking the funds to purchase any more.

Despite being in bed, Eddie didn't attempt to go to sleep. He laid facing the wall, one arm bent and holding his cigarette close enough for brief puffs while the other hugged his body for warmth. He wasn't worried about starting a fire, so he merely tapped the thing out by flicking it back behind him. Other then that casual motion, though, he didn't move any. Still, he didn't try to sleep. He turned his mind instead to whatever thoughts he could gather that weren't tainted by some form of bleak darkness. Rummaging through his thoughts, however, wasn't the best route to take. One moment, he was thinking about a lunch out at the beach and the next, he was facing a door with faded white paint with two sets of hands on his shoulders.

Jumping at the image, he didn't hear the door creak open until it bumped against the opposing wall. Twisting around, Eddie's body spoke of more surprise then he actually felt. Perhaps that was because his heart was already racing, but he couldn't find himself shocked to see Chucky leaning in the doorway. The serial killer didn't take much notice of the effect his arrival had. He just burned out his spent smoke on the frame near where he was leaning. Then he walked inside, pushing the door shut with his foot. He had shed his layers of protection upon arrival as well. He was left in a black shirt with cut off sleeves and worn slacks that almost bore the appearance of black washed jeans. Without his official clothing, Chucky looked exactly like what he was. A murderer with more instabilities then any amount of medication could ever hope to fix.

When he reached the edge of Eddie's bed, he didn't say anything like he usually did when he wanted something. He merely sat down, curling a leg underneath his lithe form, and pressed both hands into the mattress next to Eddie's head. He leaned over him, his mouth moving into a slow smile of toxic intention. Chucky's face was cast in deep shadows, for the light in the room was dim at best and his hair was on the long side. The harsh lines that made up that threatening expression could still be made out in the darkness. Trapped on the bed between the wall and that grinning demon, Eddie had no choice but to sit up. The cold in the room was quickly replaced by a lukewarm heat that was steadily raising in temperature. He pushed his back into the cold plaster of the wall, drawing his arms up to hold in front of his chest. His legs, though, he left out, near where the other's hands were on the sheets. Swallowing something that tasted like fear, he turned his eyes over to the way his roommate was looking at him.

The eyes of a predator never changed from such, no matter the intention of their expression. Thus, although Chucky smiled in a faintly teasing manner, his eyes remained cut from stone. Sharp and jaded, they were the eyes of a murderer, of the murderer of that woman continuously floating through the flickering thoughts of that evening. However, they were also the eyes of someone so versed in using that poison to lure in victims that it had become second nature. When Chuck tilted his head, causing more hair to spill into his face, his eyes were cast in a natural shadow. The cold color seemed to come alive, moving like fire through the space between them. The primal touch written within was suddenly all over Eddie's shivering form desperately trying to escape that penetrating stare.

For all his drawing away, then, he found himself still and willing when Chucky moved forward. One of the killer's hands moved up, pushing gently into the wall beside the other's head. His other hand stayed where it was on the sheets, moving only slightly as his body pushed forward. Never a man of hesitation, Chuck wet his lips with a small motion of his tongue, then pressed his mouth over Eddie's. Eddie, of course, faltered in the return, his eyes opening wide while he instinctively tried to turn his head. His every move was matched. A hand caught his chin, those eyes flashing with brilliant knowledge of this routine. The fear he had swallowed was crawling back up his spine faster and harder the longer he resisted. Unfortunately, he knew only how to resist, so resist he did. He jerked his head, moved up his legs, even thrust his hands out against that hot body. He moved his fingers over the soft cloth of his roommate's shirt, shoving backwards. The grip at his chin grew unkind, his legs were pushed back down, and his hands were ignored. All his protesting only resulted in bruising around his face. They didn't even faze the man who killed people for a living.

Unable to get away, to force this man back, Eddie felt his own resolve slipping. His body pulsed with terror, sweat beginning to roll down his back. His hands felt like they were sinking into colder and colder water, though his face was burning with a scorching fire. His head swam in a mixture of frightened confusion, making him dizzy and unsure. Choking on a scream tangled in the pants rising to the top, he didn't know whether he should let out the cry or beg for something more then what he was receiving. As Chucky grew bored with his mouth and eased his fiery mouth to his throat, he found that the answer was quite simple. Shaking his head, Eddie whispered a strangled 'please' that he should have left unspoken. He felt sick for just saying it. His stomach churned, a hand jumped to his mouth, and he gave the smallest dry heave that he was pretty sure was more psychological then physical. Whether it was or not, the killer paid it no attention. He ran his teeth along the bone just below the skin of Eddie's shoulder. The touch was violent in a muted way, a mess of wet heat in all the wrong ways. Feeling that mouth doing so much to his body, on the other hand, made his head roll on his shoulders, a drunken like feel overtaking the sickness. Quivering from his gasping mouth to his curled toes, Eddie just faintly nodded.

Chucky's touch was anything but gentle. That barely noticeable granting of permission gave way to a flurry of emotion in physical terms. His hands grabbed Eddie's hips, pinning him down underneath him. Their bodies pressed together as the serial killer pushed his burning mouth over the other's collar bone, steadily moving down as he did. The grip he held him with was painful, the pressure he used while kissing him was agonizing. For all the heat beginning to build between them, Eddie still felt cold tears on his cheeks. A choked moan escaped his lips as he covered his burning, wet face with both hands. He couldn't bring himself to touch Chuck now that he had allowed him to do this to his body. That lingering sickness then grew worse as that mouth became a slick tongue that ran from his bloodied throat to his jaw line. The hands on his hips shifted, dragging his pelvis up to meet that of the killer. Their legs intertwined slowly as Chucky moved his slender body to straddle one thigh of his roommate. The angles between them changed, drawing them closer. The closer their skin got, the farther away Eddie drew his mind. His palms pressed on his forehead, his fingers tangled in his messy hair, while he squeezed his eyes shut. He felt that mouth kissing his cheek, hands snaking their way up his shirt, and knew that the worse was coming. All this touching was merely that. The emotions behind it all were merely the primal desire to violate, not to caress. Perhaps that's why his chest tightened as his stomach heaved. Eddie nearly screamed out in horror then when Chucky rested his head at the nook of his neck, lightly licking the hollow of his throat. Unable to take it any longer, feeling that predator all over his every sense, he opened his mouth to let out the shriek building between the sense of fading reality and the subconscious horror lurking beneath the trauma. The moment his mouth was open, however, he let himself be taken to the next level of frightening depravity.

A hand closed in on his throat as two detached eyes hovered just above his frozen expression of terror. There was a second when Eddie could only stare into that utterly emotionless face that peered down at him through tangled locks of nearly black hair. Then a next to hysterical scream ripped from his mouth as he slammed his hands into those shoulders. Chucky went backwards, his fingers gripping tightly on the other's throat. Nails dug in, tearing across his flesh as the murderer rose up onto his knees for the pressure of the push. There was nothing, though, that could get him to let go. Eddie began to thrash and shriek, pounding on the wall, the mattress, even smacking that face, grabbing that hair. Hands jumped to his neck, crushing him backwards against the hard wall, the unforgiving mattress. His voice choked and sputtered, the murderer's elbows locking and his body shoving all his weight into the pin. Eddie felt his fingertips dragging down the sides of the killer's arms, felt the warmth of blood, as his vision started to spin. Before his disgusted eyes, a pleased, arrogant smile swam to the surface. Rendering him as close to lifeless as he dared, Chuck released his grip in steady intervals. That ice cold numb feeling, that dazed rush to the head, made Eddie's final attempts to escape this tainted creature's grasp futile at best.

Tears, hot as wet blood, ran down his face as a tongue flashed over white teeth. He couldn't think, he could barely move. All he could do was sob, his head slowly, hesitantly shaking in a dying attempt to beg for mercy. Already charged from the murder, however, Chucky felt nothing of the sort. He just pushed his long hair back with one hand as the other spread his accomplice's quivering legs. Eddie squeezed his eyes closed, refusing to look, to see that deranged face. He heard the unzipping of those worn, torn jeans, then felt those death stained fingers jerking him free of his own. Two hands smoothed down his waist until his boxers were eased down. His voice whispered out a 'please' that was ignored as if it had never existed. The tears grew harder, thicker, somehow wetter in the instant he swallowed his terror and tried to accept what was about to happen. Doing so was impossible, for the touch on him was as unfeeling as the world around him.

When Chucky penetrated him, Eddie cried out, his entire body jerking to the feel of that burning hot body within. The pain was unreal. His back twisted, his legs bucked, his head swung back. He tried to fight, he tried to scream, but all he could do was grit his teeth and bury his hands in the sheets that provided no more security then the man who was supposed to protect him. Laughter was the soundtrack that fueled the rape. That boastful, unconcerned sound cut through his mind, digging into the pieces trapped under years of liquid therapy. As hands reached for his throat, he saw flashes of those two demonic faces, baring dark eyes cut from stone. Hands were on his shoulders, he was facing that door with a washed out color beginning to peel away. He saw it, that memory, as clear as if he was standing there, that second, as Chucky began to strangle him. Eddie choked, coughing, his fingers attempting to peel away those that gripped as tight as death itself. The harder the grip, the clearer that image got. Spit ran down his chin, his body jumping as the killer thrust deep into him. Pressure and pain overtook his desire to live, fear throttling his every thought. White paint changed into bleak walls, those hands vanished like smoke against his back, and those chiseled faces changed to the manic expression of psychotic breaking. Plunged into reality, he was submersed in the clutches of desperation, both physical and emotional. His lungs strained for air, Chucky holding him down by his closing throat as he repeatedly pulled out and pushed forward. His head was drowning in clinging memories he couldn't make out for the dark fog rising from the lack of air. His stomach twisted and turned, his heart thudding into his chest, as he struggled to bring life back into his body. The throes of death racked his spine, convulsions contorting his entire form. The hold he had on the killer's hands started to slip away. Every inch he lost, the mounting fear of death jolted through his being. That agonizing mindset could do nothing to save him as darkness pooled in around him. All he could see was that insane face, thrown back in hysterics, laughter roaring around his numbing body. All he could feel was that monster raping him, stealing whatever shred of dignity he had left after a life of deviant behavior.

As his hands fell to the side, as his mind began to blank, as his body jerked uncontrollable, he felt Chucky releasing him. His mouth swallowed it's first breath of shaking air, bringing life back in the slowest ways possible. Sweat froze on his shivering body, aches and pains rising all over. The worse of it consumed his lower half, where a fire was stabbing through his flesh. Gingerly, he moved his fingers over the skin that throbbed. He felt indentations from the hands at his neck, then the wetness that slicked over his thighs. Fire ran from his eyes as he looked down upon the liquid coating his quivering fingertips. Furious disgust consumed his half dead mind, sickness rushing to the surface. He grabbed at his waist, twisting his body so that he could empty his stomach onto the floor.

" You shouldn't start things you can't finish, Eddie," that Jersey slang voice snaked it's way into the frigid air, running along the accomplice's skin like metal. He gagged and vomited again, closing his eyes. Behind him, Chucky snickered in a way that was nearly drunk. Eddie didn't have to look at him to know he was grinning, mentally wasted on the volatile expression of psychotic 'love'. Whatever sense of rationale he might have possessed walking into that room was long gone. He wouldn't regain it until he awoke again, which could be hours from now. Until then, however, Eddie was at the 'mercy' of that monster. Wiping his mouth on the back of his hand, he could only guess where this vile evening of freezing winterish temperatures would end up.

Carefully sitting back, Eddie hiked his pants back up around his hips. He didn't bother with cleaning himself. Rather, he just pressed his back against the wall and turned his bruised face to look at that killer. Chuck gazed at him through his slick, disastrous curls, his eyes like broken glass. They cut in and shattered what hold Eddie had on his demeanor. The tears slowly made their way down his blanched face. The heat of them felt like it was melting his skin against the chill in the air. Swallowing dryly, he went to wipe them away, simply because the fire was growing unbearable. Before he could, Chucky reached over and rested his hand on Eddie's chin. His grip was so light and loose, it was as if it wasn't there. Slowly, the serial killer leaned in close, easing his mouth open. He pressed his slick tongue to his accomplice's cheek and licked up the line of salty tears.

A shrill scream of 'stop' slammed into the walls of the freezing apartment as two hands shoved forward with an unprecedented amount of pressure.

All at once, everything within the confines of the bedroom shifted. Chuck's back crashed down onto the floor, his lanky body sprawled out with a low growl of angry agony. Eddie's feet were on the creaky floorboards. The next second, the thin wooden door to his room was thrown open, for it couldn't lock, and there was absolutely nothing trapping him there any longer. The living room was a bleak sheet of darkness in broken up shapes. As he had for so long, he didn't look at it as he ran through to the front door. Footsteps scrambled up, closing in on him as he smashed his knuckles into the wood and metal. Locks caught, undid, jammed, in his shaking hands before his entire world was bathed in the toxic cold of the outside world. Eddie jerked his way through the barely opened exit, twisting as he hurried towards the stairs. His feet throbbed from the intense cold, his boots laying discarded in his bedroom. He never went back for them, for any of his protective clothing. He heard his name being screamed, heard two feet carrying that monster ever closer, and he ran as hard, as fast, as he could.

The stairs wound their way, dropping steadily, for this building was old and worn from the harsh climate and unconcerned residents. Eddie slipped several times in his haste. Each fall bashed his knees into the stairs or railing, but the shocking pain was nothing compared to the searing damage already done. He just kept going, the stabbing air cutting through his chest and into his lungs. The daggers made him want to scream, to rip his organs from his aching form, but he didn't dare lose an inch in the attempt. None of it mattered. One moment he was crashing into the stairs as his feet left the wood. One moment, he could hear his name bouncing off the stairs, off the wood, off the world and into his mind. One moment, he could feel those cold eyes watching his every move, taking every spill to get that much closer. Then, the next, his hands had thrust open the front door to the complex and he was facing nothing other then white snow and the cemented universe of the city block their hell was located on.

Every rational thought told him what would happen should he leave the doorway. He had been too afraid to help that lost soul survive the lustful wrath of Charles Lee Ray. He had been too afraid to even give her an ounce of dignity. He had known the wrath that could end with his own grave being dug. He felt the bruises, the rage, the predator within that mask of curls and detached eyes. He knew what lay in his future should he run. Still, he took off down the deserted winter street, his numb and cracked feet falling into the ankle deep powder with unimaginable jolts of aguish. His hands gripped his arms as he ran into the shadows stretching over the sidewalks, the streets, where the lamps flickered and twitched. Snow covered the world, blanketing it in a frozen ideal of perfection, of a purity that couldn't belong in a land so filled with vile things. He ran from one of them, a sin in human form, a monster from the fairy tales.

Somehow, Eddie knew he was running towards an even worse one. He could feel it with every step, every piece of snowy ice that graced his body. The snow, the white, it melted into terror, rising out from the dark alleys around him. His running fell into an awkward stumble, his eyes widening in what he supposed was horrorstricken grief. He knew Chucky was coming up behind him. If not then, he would come later, with a piece of rope and perhaps a knife. Yet, he collapsed to his knees in the middle of the walkway in some nameless street in the forgotten heart of a city known for the wind that ripped him apart. The cold, the white, how it called to him. He had always told himself not to draw memories to the present. That door, those hands, they danced in the flakes, coming ever closer. He tried to wipe them away, tried to suppress them, tried to turn back and run into the unforgiving arms of a man whose passions would be the death of him. There was no hiding from the past when an entire evening had been spent prying them free. He did all he could, but the weather, the circumstances, had been against him from the beginning. He saw everything as clear as day, as he had the day it had actually happened, more then a decade beforehand. That day, that frightening day, in the middle of winter, in front of a white door, just like always, a white door.

The coldest, hardest irony of it all, was that Chucky had been right, for all his deranged wisdom. Eddie really shouldn't start things he couldn't finish.


	2. Chapter 2

Winter had never been kind at the Caputo household. The weather wasn't the only thing that stung in icy blows against skin unprotected by layers of clothing and skin. As the world fell into a sleepy, white coma, the apartment descended into a secondary level of hell. The only thing preventing it from being primary was that the hell continued throughout the rest of the year. Something about the cold, the lack of comforting heat, however, changed the atmosphere within. The holidays from school came at a heavy price. No amount of annoyance with schoolwork compared to the trauma that went on behind the locked and bolted doors of that place.

A simple three bedroom on the top floor, it was nothing special, other then the rank smell of booze mixed with mold. The carpet was dirty, the kitchen was grimy, the bathrooms unusable. Everything there was either broken, falling apart, or stolen. What was stolen was mostly in liquid form and was for Eddie's parents only. His mother, she was always in the kitchen. Somewhere in his memories, he knew that she had to of left that small cut out section. Yet, when the recollections got loose, all he saw was her, her head bowed down, a hand on the counter, and the other wrapped around the neck of a tall tequila bottle. She was bone thin. He never saw her eat. She made dinner, throwing the plates onto the table, but she never ate. Her body was bones, the skin stretched tight and yellow over them. Her hair was slick with grease, falling down her back and shoulders in tightly clumped locks. He didn't know what her face looked like. She always had her head down because of the broken nose, the black eyes, and cracked teeth. No, he never saw her face, not even when she was on her back, her head back, her hair everywhere and nowhere, as her husband stomped on her chest.

His father was a different story entirely. He was never home in the mornings. In the mornings, he didn't exist. He was a name that was never spoken, a face that was never seen, a presence that was never needed. When he woke up, Eddie didn't know. His father left half a cold pot of coffee on the counter, but he was never there by the time the lights were turned on. In the evenings, he came home with his jacket undone and a plastic bag in his hand. He didn't come home every night with one, but in the memories, he always did. He threw the jacket on the couch and dropped the bag on the counter, where his sneering wife would put the bottles in the fridge. Dinner was tense and quiet, then it was time for 'reading'. He called it that when he pretended to read the newspaper. He spent that time drinking, guzzling it down while his wife did the dishes. She always managed to find one that was dirty enough to throw at him, telling him to get up and help her. That's how the fights started. That's how they always started, in the memories anyways. It was her fault. She didn't deserve what she got, but it was her fault nevertheless.

Eddie didn't see the fights usually. He heard them. He would sit in his tiny bedroom, his hands over his ears, and still heard them. A dish would break, would clatter into the wall or floor. The chair would fall to the ground and the first hollow smack of skin against skin would ring out. Some nights, the fight was one sided. She let him hit her, crying out 'Richard' whenever the smack was too hard. Some nights, she fought back. There would be banging and crunching sounds, the pots and pans rattling and hitting the tiles. She would shove him, punch him, hurt him, he would bellow 'Eve', and the air would tighten when she shrieked. When his mother shrieked, Eddie knew what was coming next. She had gone too far, had drawn blood, and it was his father's turn to splatter the rusty oven with the red ink. He would hear the slamming. Her arms on the counter, her head into the floor, her feet into the fridge door, her hands on his back. She would shriek, she would shriek, she would shriek, and she would shriek until he stopped. Then she would cry. She always cried then, whenever she shrieked, because no one ever came to help her when he was inside her, taking her soul with every thrust. He heard all this on the nights when he was alone, fingers digging into his skull, trying to block out the deranged and desperate noise of the kitchen battle ground.

When he wasn't alone, all he heard were his own screams.

They were his brothers. They were skinny demons cut from the same cloth and woven together in a twisted way so wrong, no one of clarity could help but cover their mouth as their stomachs heaved. They looked like his father, although he could never quite recall what he looked like. He knew they did, for they were just as venomous. Snakes with dark glassy eyes, wavy ebony hair, and stark pale skin the color of snow. One had the face of a cobra, his hair longer and framing his awful smile and pug nose. One was a viper, his face long and flat with a crushed nose from a fight that had no story other then the words 'a fight'. Eddie knew their names, of course, but he had long since forgotten their titles. All he could bring himself to identify them with were codenames from a discussion with his current demon, Chucky. The cobra was the creature known as Dash. The viper, Becker. They were the cunningly depraved shadows that slipped from their bedroom and into his when the glass shattered, when the world shattered as the screaming, singular or dual, rang out from behind closed doors.

He didn't know how they got into his room. The door was always locked, but still they managed. When the lights were out, when the shrieking was starting, they would come. The door would creak open, slowly, until it lightly clattered into the wall with the smallest thud. Despite the echoing howls of their mother, despite having his hands so tightly over his ears, Eddie never failed to hear that thud. It was a physical sound, one that was harsh as metal and cold as ice. His entire body would instantly go numb, the shivering would jolt down into his spine. They had such wicked smiles on, the two snakes with their shadowed grins and gleaming eyes. Every step they took towards his bed was hollow with an intent so vile, the devil himself would be forced to turn his head to avert his eyes.

Dash started. His voice felt like sandpaper over gravel. The words he used were dripping in hungry pleasures for things condemned by the silver cross he wore around his neck. He would drop down next to Eddie and grab his arms. His grip hurt in more then one way, although Eddie could never recall the ways other then physically. He held him in place as he spat out phrase after phrase. They flowed in an attempt at a honey sweet voice. After all, they were gentle words that included unheard of terms of endearment. Whatever they were, they were not kind. They sank into Eddie's stomach, twisting and churning, until he felt like heaving over the edge of the bed. Dash wouldn't let him. He would tear his hands away from his little brother's arms and push them over his mouth. Silence was golden with those two. They valued it much more then the muffled sobs and pleads Eddie choked out, his tiny hands quivering against the backs of his brother's.

The words continued as Becker stood and stared at the other Caputo boys. His smile never faltered, his face never changed, yet there was a supreme difference in him. Eddie didn't know then that listening to Dash whispering how much they loved Eddie was what got him into the frame of mind. That hideously black frame of mind with hands of burning metal and panting mouth attached. He didn't know it then; he wouldn't for years. Nevertheless, he listened and he watched. When he had heard enough, he knelt down on the bedside. He wouldn't say a word. He would just extend his left hand and place it firmly on Eddie's hip. The struggling that started up meant nothing to Becker. He would just tilt his head down as he ran his fiery tongue over his right middle finger.

The wetness would feel like liquid fire when Becker moved his hand down. Every inch fell like the angel's fall from grace as he drew closer to his quivering, shivering brother. Dash held his shoulders back, pressing them deep within the restriction of the bed sheets tangled beneath them. Eddie struggled. He couldn't recall how, but he did. He knew he had to of, for the bruising on his shoulders showed it. But he didn't know what he did. He must have tried to scream. He knew Dash placed his hand over his lips and pressed down. Becker held his hip. His touch had condemned control over his legs, forcing them still for fear of what he would do with that hand. Once his slithering tongue pulled off the edge of those dirty, tainted, heinous fingers, they fell forth into the freezing darkness in a fiery expression of the lust.

Becker had hands cut from scorching metal. He eased them over Eddie's waist as his body finally descended on the mattress. His touch was so gentle, it pierced into his little brother's body like a rusted needle. Every miniscule touch pricked, drew a thick stream of infected blood, and imprinted itself in the flesh of a formerly pure body. Eddie cried. His tears fell hot and heavy from his eyes as he squeezed them shut. Dash caressed his hair, running his fingers through them, as his voice spat out curling whispers of the falsity of what was happening. Words of love, of trust, of damning silence, buzzed into his skull as he grabbed hold of Dash's arm. He wanted to empty his stomach, he wanted to kick his legs, but the fear. The fear was like ice in his throat, tasting of molten sick, and all he could do was grasp Dash's arm and bury his forehead into that frozen skin. His brother held him, held him tight, as his other rubbed his fingers over his stomach and down, down, down to the forbidden place between his legs and beneath his shorts.

Every movement of Becker's hand was ingrained in the image of Hell's Fire.

Time didn't exist on the nights Eddie heard his own screams within his own ears. He would never know how long he was with them. He only felt and he only saw them, those snakes, curling and uncurling their venom tipped fangs into his flesh. The viper would shift into a monster he couldn't comprehend, his face never changing. His expression was cut into the stone as his eyes were made of glass. The reflections off those dark shards were too vile to look into. He never could meet those eyes as he screamed into the arm of Dash. They never left him in their deluded delirium of predatory hunger. Becker swallowed his every motion of breaking with greed until he was so overfed, he couldn't stand it. Only then did his hands bare the icy notion held within the pools of his eyes.

Becker slipped out of the room the way he had come. He drew back his hand and Eddie knew he could see all the sticky blood dripping off his ugly fingers even when there was nothing there. His smile never halted, never faltered, never shifted. It smoothed over that flat affect in the cold of the evening the same as it had in the beginning. He could smooth his fingers too, over his shirt, over his full belly, and he would turn. His footsteps lingered, drawn back and forth, as if he wished to return to the shattered boy laying in pieces on the bed. He never did. The shrieking had ceased by then. Becker would pause at the door, pressing his ear to it, and together, the three Caputos listened to the weak, choked sobs being sputtered out in the kitchen. Whenever there were thudding steps beyond the door, Becker would rest his cheek there and he would smile mercilessly into the faded paint. Whenever there weren't, he would push his metal hands to the knob and out the door he would go. As soon as the thin thing clattered in the doorframe, his footsteps were eaten up by the hell which consumed all of them.

Eddie was left in the withered form he collapsed in. With Dash.

Like a spider, Dash spun a web to lay Eddie down in. His grip released his little brother's shoulders and he would allow the child to curl up. He always curled up, into that tiny ball to protect himself from more fingers that weren't coming. Fear drowned him, dragging him deeper and deeper into the watery grave of unheard screaming in the cold nights that smashed into him, cracking him in places he could never recover. He was forced to swallow that fear as long as Dash was in the sheets with him. With Becker having gone, Dash recovered his own evil. He drew it up from the pit of his skinny stomach and he would lay it down upon Eddie. Words. He loved the sound of those words as he hissed spitfire. They rolled off his tongue, fat and happy, in the moments he rested his chin on his brother's shoulder. Dash told him the pleasure of the perversion which afflicted the viper. He told him all the details as he verbally raped his brother in the still of the evening as Becker went to his own room, to his own world, to his own thoughts.

Dash didn't leave until the break of dawn. Eddie stared at the wall in his horrified silence. He was always staring at the same crack when he felt the bed shift. Dash was so skinny, so slender, but when he left, he took with him a great weight. Eddie felt it, as the bed shook whenever he got to his feet. The white cross hanging from his neck would flicker the light of the new dawn on the younger boy's shoulder. Eddie always watched Becker leave. He never watched Dash. He felt his sheets being jerked up over his head, heard one final whisper to say nothing, and he followed the steps as they proceeded to his door. He counted the seconds until it was over. Dash wasn't like Becker. He never fought to come back nor did he hesitate at the door. Every time, every morning, he was up and gone within fifteen counts.

Once the door clanked shut behind the cobra, Eddie pushed his hands into the sheets and he would heave over the side of his bed. Then he would lay there, in broken, silent agony, staring with blank eyes at the door they always managed to get in through. Like snakes, they could slip through any crack. Yes, they were snakes. Their venom was just as deadly after all. It poisoned Eddie worse then the fights he heard, would always hear, for longer than he ever wanted to.

Winter was as unforgiving as a scorned mistress when the silence filtered through the bleak evening the year Eddie faced the white door.

There was no screaming that night. The fight started the same. Forever, when he saw that night, repeating in his shattered memories, he saw them. His mother, she stood in the kitchen, her head bowed before nothing. One bony hand was smacked down flat on the counter, her nails digging into the cracked plaster from the previous nights standing there doing so. The other, it's skeletal fingers were wrapped about the glistening neck of a tall tequila bottle. The mouth was smeared with lipstick from her blistered, bruised lips. She stood there, her faded, stained sun dress hanging off her weathered flesh. She had no face. She was only a body, a skeleton gripping her weapon, standing before death and praying to him. She had no face. Her mouth was there, hidden, but she had no face, not then, not that night. Just flesh and bone, cut from the dirt and sewn together in that thrown away cut out section of the apartment that would become the coffin she rotted in.

His father was nothing other than the arms of a brutish monster having crawled from beneath the bed of a childhood night terror. The paper hadn't come, for the snow, but he had the pages folded out on the small table his mother threw the dished down on. She didn't make anything that evening. She always made dinner, but not that night. That night, she fastened her mouth to the bottle she swung back like a pistol. He watched her do it, looking over his arms resting on the paper from the day before when the headlines were easily read. The pans were in the sink, soaking in frosty waters, infested with roaches, but she didn't touch them. She grabbed her weapon and she swung it to the lips she didn't have and she gasped the poison down into her bones.

The arms jerked off the table and stole into her kitchen. One snatched up her matted hair, ripping back her shadowed mask. One snatched up the handle of the pan dripping with the holy water. Her eyes were the color of brunt wood as they opened wider than the gates of Heaven. Her face was so haunted, lost as the hope had gone away with the help that never came. Those eyes were staring, staring into nothing, as the scars finally broke open to reveal the suffering screams she had never screamed loud enough. The light touched her, falling in from the frozen purity lying just beyond the thick windows of that forsaken apartment. The burning of her eyes cut through the ice, through the silence, just before the arm, the monster, pulled back the pan she hadn't made dinner in. She didn't shriek as the tequila bottle was ripped from the counter as her entire body splattered over the rusty stove this time.

This time, she slid down the stove in silence and down she slumped into the grim and the split liquor which had eaten her down to flesh and bone.

Eddie felt the fear in his mouth as he felt the fear on his skin. Two sets of hands moved over his flesh, over his shoulders, where he stood in the living room, waiting to say good night to a woman without a mouth and a man without a face. They snaked their way around him, pushing flesh and bone into his back. They twisted him around, away from the arm pulling back the blood stained pan for the second. The entire world smelled of tequila, bitter and sour, as he faced the white door. The door at the end of the hallway, with the peeling paint that curled off the condemned entrance in an effort to run. His legs melted to the floor, but they were like fire, and he was quickly pulled out as they burned through the resistance. Their hands on his shoulders cut into his psyche as he felt the tears on his cheeks. His hands gripped in front of his broken body, praying without words, as the door drew ever nearer. He was beckoned towards it even as they pushed him into the embrace. Heavily, he touched his fingers to his forehead, down to his stomach, and across his shoulders. Nothing, however, could save him as he stood there, head turned towards God, seeing all of the white purity flaking off that frame, with those hands pressed like coals into his shoulders.

The door was opened, although he would never know by who. Inside was their nest, with two beds on opposing walls like a room within a forgotten metal asylum. Eddie was shoved inside by both, but both did not step into the door after him. Looking over his shoulder, he saw the viper pushing the door shut as the cobra drew up its hood in fury. The lock clicked as the banging began. A pulse shot through the frozen, dead air every time those two fists smashed into the wood. The white rattled as Becker stood over Eddie's fallen form. The expression wasn't the same. There was no smile. There was only wild eyes and burning hands undoing the buttons of a black shirt without detail. Every button eased undone, hanging there, as burning, burned flesh was revealed in slow arches.

After the shirt fell to the floor, everything became shattered glass. Fragments that cut into the mind whenever the mind was turned to the evening of the white door. Coals pushed down onto his flesh as he screamed. No one covered his mouth this time. He screamed, pounding his fragile fists into that brooding back. Arms stabbed into his eye sight, on either side of his head. His legs thrashed, his lungs burst, and he threw his head back and shrieked. The fire consumed him in every inch, scorching his flesh raw, as the shrieks were pulled from his mouth in the haze of splattered tears. Every shriek thrust into his skin as his body jerked to the pulsing coming from the outside world that would never be able to sink its teeth into that moment in the depths of Hell. The pieces never fit together. There was just shrieking and fire and the melted flesh that fell away in globs as the soul was ripped out of Eddie.

The pulse died as the footsteps came in quick secession. Eddie covered his head in a shrieking terror that bathed him in fear so sick, it tasted like the metal grabbing his hips. Through it all, he saw Becker jerking around to see the door as it crashed open and into the wall. It stayed there, stuck, as those arms filled the entire asylum as all three boys moved in slow motion to see the man with the livid charcoal eyes and the face wrought with demented wrath. His face was the most frightening image of all. It was as though it were pieced together from the scrap yard, brutalized beyond recognition. Falling from those welded eyes was the blood that pooled into the hollow pan held within one giant hand. Marcus screamed, twisting from the room and running as he fell and as he grabbed hold of the white cross dangling about his throat. Lucas threw up his fiery hands as he bolted forth on his knees in his naked expression of similar taint. Eddie covered his face as the pan moved back in a slow, steady stream of red droplets.

The crush of metal into bone shattered throughout the cold still silence.

Becker collided with the floor as his blood splashed into the walls. The pan hovered over the wound as those glass eyes stared into Eddie's. The red pooled under his face, his damp curls falling in thick streams into his eyes. He had no face as that arm jerked the pan back over the head that wasn't there. The darkness overthrew his demonic features as the other hand snatched up one of Becker's limp wrists, blood oozing down his arm and dripping off his ugly fingers. His body was flipped onto his back as the pan crashed down and Eddie tore himself from the floor. He never grabbed his shorts. He never grabbed anything. He just smashed into the doorframe and snatched at the air as he ran towards the door thrown wide open into the howling wind. Out into the downpour of white snow, he ran, down the twisting, open staircase, and to the street with the dimly lit lights and the slowly ambling cars. He saw Dash, slumped against one street lamp, his hands clutching his cross and staring with his cobra eyes back over his shoulder to the blood stained windows of their home. Eddie looked back at him one last time, saw that snaky smile, and heard the final sick words to fall from those lips as that body pushed up the side of the green metal.

" You can't run forever, honey,"

The white door followed his every step as Eddie ran as fast, as hard, as long as he could from those three bedrooms with the flesh and bones eaten alive. He saw himself as the child he had been the first evening those snakes had found their way into his room, but he wasn't. He was older and he found a path of theft that lead him into the adulthood that lead to a new monster. Shivering, one night, only a few years later, Eddie had been slumped over in an alley way. Those boots had made such loud crunching on the snow, yet he barely heard them. When he saw that face, those curls, with that smile, he had cried into his arms. A monster, he looked so much like his brother. He spoke vile words too, but when he reached down and rested gloved fingers on his neck, his touch wasn't like fire. His touch was like the ice of death. It was that difference which had drawn Eddie from the broken ground and into the reality he had long since found had never been truly real.

Everything else about the night he met Chucky was faded to the hands of time. All he truly recalled was the sickening thought of how closely the grinning murderer resembled the brother who had escaped just like him. Along the way, however, he found that this person was much more like the brother who hadn't. Somehow, as two separate entities, they had tormented him into the depths of his mind. Woven together in one whole, though, they didn't have the same effect. Years of self meditating with a lighter and a shot glass had lead to that. Eddie followed every step into those woods with a smoke and a shot of scotch. He could follow those boots through the wooden park over and over as long as he didn't have to be reminded of the white door. As it was, Chucky had soon shown his true colors, and those patterns were much worse then the cloth of the viper and cobra. He was much more of a rattler, with a open warning, and a silent attack.

Kneeling in the snow, in the fall of Chicago, Eddie heard the warning. He heard those footsteps drawing up on him. He tried to will himself to move, but he couldn't. He just fell forward and pressed his hands into the powder of the night. He thought of that white door and he recalled those names. The codenames fell away, the one mocking the boy who ran, and the one reminiscent of another boy beaten by his father. Dash and Becker, they faded into the white purity like a forgotten cry for help. Instead, he saw his brothers as they had been. They had been cut from the same cloth, but the stitching had been so different. In every memory, they stood shoulder to shoulder, with mirror faces and mirror bodies, though he knew that's not how they were. Somewhere in the back of his fragmented mind, Eddie saw them as they had truly appeared. He saw the broken crook in Lucas's nose from 'a fight' and he saw the gripping burns over his naked flesh. He saw the cracked teeth in Marcus's smile and the bruising on those hands grabbing that cross. He saw the weight that Marcus had gained and the bones that Lucas had lost reflecting their presence in his mind's eye. The flesh and bone. Beyond all of this, he saw their eyes. The glass of black, the shattered, broken glass that stared out of empty faces poisoned by the shrieking, the shrieking, the shrieking, that lingered just outside their white door.

But he couldn't run forever. He had started this. Now he had to finish it.

Slowly, Eddie rose to his feet in a numb manner. He felt the fear pooling in his stomach as he turned his glassy eyes to the murderer walking over to him. Chucky was holding a bottle of tequila in one hand and a cigarette in the other. His eyes were burnt wood flickering with the embers that possessed the blood lust that had found his mouth upon that of the woman forever running in the woods by the park of shattered childhood's. Her image spliced the scene, her mouth turned out in the strangled shriek, as her eyes begged the no one that could save her. When the predator struck, the bite was poisoned from the moment of contraction to the moment the breath left the lips. She had perished and so did he. He twisted towards that monster with his maniac smile as the low, rolling chuckles poured into the fluttering snow that would bathe the city in a false blanket of purity. Beneath those lies, there were only the apartments housing creatures whose pleasures were as perverse as the darkness they snaked their way out of.

Eddie reached out and grabbed hold of that skinny neck. Looking deep into the burning fires of shattered glass, he saw the white door rising up as two hands smoothed over his shoulders. Chucky touched his left hip with one firm grip of possessive nature. He had no face in those shadows. Neither did Eddie as he swung that bottle back and drank down the alcoholic chaser of poison that would let him forget. Let him forget her, standing in the kitchen. Let him forget him, his arms folded over the paper. Let him forget Marcus, whispering those words. Let him forget Lucas, undoing those buttons. Let him forget her, the forgotten fawn caught up in the storm, lost forever on one lone, freezing night in the Chicago fall in some cast away park. Let him forget the white door, the run, and the start. Let him forget everything.

Except the shattered glass he could never escape.

Unless he wished to finally face the wrath held in those burnt eyes.


End file.
